William Augustus Muhlenberg and Phillips Brooks and the Growth of the Episcopal Broad Church Movement
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
W&M ScholarWorks Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 1994 Parties, Visionaries, Innovations: William Augustus Muhlenberg and Phillips Brooks and the Growth of the Episcopal Broad Church Movement Jay Stanlee Frank Blossom College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd Part of the History of Religion Commons Recommended Citation Blossom, Jay Stanlee Frank, "Parties, Visionaries, Innovations: William Augustus Muhlenberg and Phillips Brooks and the Growth of the Episcopal Broad Church Movement" (1994). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539625924. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-x318-0625 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. P a r t ie s , V i s i o n a r i e s , I n n o v a t i o n s William Augustus Muhlenberg and Phillips Brooks and the Growth of the Episcopal Broad Church Movement A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of History The College of William and Mary in Virginia In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts hy Jay S. F. Blossom 1994 Ap p r o v a l S h e e t This thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Jay S. F. Blossom Approved, June 1994 ix * i f ■ f h David L. Holmes Professor of Religion Chandos M. Brown' Associate Professor of History Jam es P. Whittenbui Associate Professor of Hikory 11 For my parents T a b l e o f Co n t e n t s Acknowledgements.............................................................................................................v A b stra c t ............................................................................................................................ vi Chapter One: Parties ..................................................................................................... 2 Chapter Two: Visionaries ........................................................................................... 22 Chapter Three: Innovations ...................................................................................... 45 Bibliography .................................................................................................................... 93 Acknowledgements Professor David L. Holmes inspired this project, guided it through its completion, and encouraged me to pursue further graduate study in religious history. Without him this thesis could not have been attempted, and to him I express profound gratitude. Professor Chandos M. Brown and Professor James P. Whittenburg gave generously of their time in the reading of this paper. I offer sincere thanks for their assistance both in and outside the classroom. Although three thousand miles away, my parents have been my loudest cheerleaders during the writing of this paper. I am indebted to them for their gentle persistence. My colleagues at the Society of the Alumni of the College of William and Mary were a constant source of encouragement while I wrote this thesis. I am also grateful to Gilbert Contreras, Connally M. Gilliam, Timothy J. Grove, Phillip J. Jones, James P. Kaplan, and Scot E. Labin for their friendship and support. Ab st r a c t The nineteenth century was a time of growth and transition in the Episcopal Church. Nearly dead after the American Revolution, it reorganized and rejuvenated itself during a century of religious tumult, becoming by 1900 an influential medium-sized denomination. Anglicanism had historically been divided into subsets called church parties, and the nineteenth-century growth of the Episcopal Church took place in the context of these parties vying for influence within the denomination. The high church highlighted the unique institutions of Anglicanism, while the evangelical party emphasized the necessity for each person to have an individual, sudden, and supernatural experience of conversion. A third party, the Oxford movement, which became influential in the 1840s, underscored Anglicanism’s connection with the Roman Catholic Church. Not only did this movement (also called tractarianism) lead to the recovery of a more catholic theology among high church Episcopalians, but it offered liturgical innovations as well. Members of a fourth group, the broad church, rejected the notion of parties altogether. Its adherents claimed that the church must address the intellectual and physical needs of modern people. Members of the broad church wing typically advocated tolerance of all beliefs and open-mindedness about new breakthroughs in science and theology. During the nineteenth century the broad church grew to overshadow the other parties. The lives of William Augustus Muhlenberg and Phillips Brooks, Episcopal clergymen reared in the evangelical world, demonstrate how this shift occurred in two instances. Not only did the two become broad churchmen themselves, but they also lead other Episcopal clergy toward the broad church. Muhlenberg, a schoolmaster, innovative rector, and advocate of the poor, influenced many of his students to found schools and hospitals and adopt new liturgical practices. Theologically conservative, Muhlenberg was also ecumenical and socially progressive. He instituted Sunday and day schools, choirs, free meals, a clinic, and an employment society in his New York parish, and he supported various shelters throughout the city. The sermons of Phillips Brooks, intellectual rector and bishop, were a sensation in Boston, Philadelphia, New York, and London. He taught a new way of thinking—positive, open to new ideas, tolerant of diversity, and adaptable to modernity. Brooks believed that the force of Christ within people made their potential limitless, and he encouraged his influential and wealthy audiences to feel confident in human progress. The Episcopal Church of today is in some ways a synthesis of Muhlenberg and Brooks. Primarily urban and open-minded, it appeals mainly to society’s elites, yet it sees a mandate to reach out to the disenfranchised. In its efforts to be socially relevant, it has sometimes sacrificed orthodox theology. It values toleration and recognizes the need to communicate and cooperate with other churches. The Episcopal Church is indebted to Brooks and Muhlenberg, the pioneers of these trends. P a r t ie s , V i s i o n a r i e s , I n n o v a t i o n s William Augustus Muhlenberg and Phillips Brooks and the Growth of the Episcopal Broad Church Movement Ch a p t e r O n e P a r t ie s Revolutions in politics, demographics, and science shook the United States during the nineteenth century. But no less important were radical changes in religious belief and practice during those tumultuous hundred years. The Second Great Awakening and the advent of camp meetings inspired new religious fervor. Visionary preachers founded new denominations and sects. And novel interpretations of scripture rocked the religious establishment. The Episcopal Church, the American descendent of the colonial Church of England, also changed profoundly during the nineteenth century. Its formal services of old-fashioned prayers, its disdain for emotionalism, its hierarchical structure, and its establishment reputation made it the bastion of the upper classes in 1900 as well as in 1800, but innovations and transformations were nonetheless dramatic. At the opening of the nineteenth century the Episcopal Church had been at its lowest ebb. In the South its membership had declined precipitously, a result of Baptist and Methodist missions among the poorer classes and religious lethargy among the wealthy. In the North, on the other hand, small groups of elites in 2 3 New York City, Philadelphia, and other cities had clung to Anglicanism without reaching out to the world beyond the church walls. Energized by immigration and missions, by 1900 the Episcopal Church had taken its place as one medium-sized American denomination in a dizzying array of religious choices.1 Its study groups, policy-making bodies, and individual clergy were addressing many questions of profound national importance. Episcopalians were beginning to forsake biblical literalism and legalistic behavioral restrictions; they were seeking to accommodate Darwinism, various forms of biblical criticism, and other modern ideas into their faith. During the nineteenth century the Episcopal Church was transformed by liberal-minded minsters and lay people who broke traditions and refused to be caught up in the conflicts that deeply divided the Episcopal church. Chief among these reformers were William Augustus Muhlenberg (1796-1877) and Phillips Brooks (1835-1893), who met the physical and mental needs of those around them and preached the timeless gospel message in a context relevant to urban Victorians. Thus, while in 1800 the Episcopal Church had appeared to be on the edge of collapse, a century later it was poised to meet the new challenges of the 1 Episcopalians in 1900 had the seventh largest number of congregations among American denominational families: Methodists, 53,908 congregations; Baptists, 49,905; Presbyterians, 15,452; Lutherans, 10,787; Roman Catholics, 10,339; Disciples o f Christ, 10,298; Episcopalians, 6,264. Although less precise, statistics for membership also put Episcopalians in seventh place in the order of denominational